Top student!

Ever done anything that you would recommend to everyone?

Will your dad hang out with me at burning man?

1. Most consecutive HU SNGs you've ever won/lost?

2. Best/worst meals in Vegas this summer?

3. Favorite Elliot Smith album?

4. Which was worse, Black Friday or losing the gambling olympics?

5. Portland or Chicago?

I think everyone should donate an amount that's unusually significant (to them) to a charity they're passionate about, at least once. See how it feels. No need to go crazy about seemingly impossible giving mandates to keep up with. Just see if it makes them want to do it again. Rumnchess often likes to say "money is nothing", and we agree there, even though it manifests itself in completely different ways for both of us based on our personalities.

Having 70k stuck on FTP put one of my biggest fears right back in my face. I HATE the thought of having nothing to show for hard work, that my last few months in online poker were a (results oriented) waste of time. I HATE the thought that the money could be used for so many good things but might end up going to FTP's bankruptcy's lawyers instead. I'm pissed that FTP turned down a deal to pay me and that because of that, I might never see my money again.

**** that ****. But what really made it hurt was just realizing what 70k meant. I have plenty of cash and a cushy new job to boot. I'll be fine. I can afford to drop 70k because my poker site was owned by scumbags who I occasionally daydream about doing very violent things to (mostly just Bitar - I believe the reports of Howard in a depression alone in his house). 70k is just one bad run in superturbos so go **** yourself FTP you pieces of ****.

But if I can drop 70k and my life is the same thing as it ever was and I'm still in a pretty ludicrously positive place financially, maybe that says something about where I'd really most like that 70k to go. And so I decided privately a while ago to give whatever I get back from FTP to Partners in Health or another charity that does well when you put it up to the scrutiny of a good ol poker-style equity calculation.

I PMed durrrr on the off chance he'd be interested in fulfilling part of his $1M pledge with me if he got to help pick which charity it went to. Predictably, I got no response, probably because that's really not the fairest way to comply with the freeroll he gave. Also because I've never talked to Tom Dwan before in my life and he probably gets 20 of those PMs a day.

Worth a shot. At any rate, if you believe in karma, maybe this will help us get our money back.



1. Not sure, someone posted a Sharkscope earlier in the thread that lists it as 16. I vaguely recall a 21 way back in the day at Bodog.

2. I liked the first meal at N9NE a lot (you didn't even pay for that one!) and both trips to Burger Bar just because I'm a simple man who really just needs a burger and an alcoholic milkshake.

3. Either New Moon, even though it's just a collection of unreleased stuff compiled after death, or XO. I will now proceed to list my Top 10 Elliot Smith songs:

Very very difficult - if I recall, you'll be miffed at the omission of Baby Britain. There's about 10 more songs I could listen to over an over again, and even from songs I don't like as much there are some really good parts ("****ing oughtta stay the hell away from things you know nothing about", 1:40-2:00 on Memory Lane, etc).

4. At least I still had my pride after Black Friday.

5. It's going to take me a while to really see Chicago as a home. The things I like about it are all just the things that remind me of home. I'm sure I'll grow into it and come to love it, I'm pretty adaptive especially these days. But for now it's gotta be Portland.

whats your biggest downswing in the ev line? im currently on a 25-26 buyin pretty straight down line on my ev graph in 200 games or so. this is standard right? i feel like im on the wrong side of every preflop cooler but i dont wanna delude myself that everything is okay if its not, but at the same time im still pretty convinced im soldily beating 100 sts.

you never answered my one about fav food

you never answered my question either mers

For someone with that undertitle, I don't really know much (anything) about "dishes", "cooking", or "preparing food like an adult". I come up with some pretty damn good sanwiches, wraps, and salad concoctions.

I love fruit, cheese, yogurt, eggs, potatoes, beans, juice. I also eat seafood for dubious ethical reasons (they don't suffer as much? oh **** it I just want some more protein) and love good crab, fish, and scallops, etc.

Give me a smoothie and a fresh mozzarella sandwich and I'm a very happy man.

The undertitle actually comes from college. Juniors and seniors at my school generally don't get their meals from University dining halls anymore. Instead, there are these big clubs (250 people or so), you join one of them, and that's where you eat. The clubs are lined up on what's called "The Street", and that's where most of the partying happens (for the most part, people go to other clubs all the time, but occasionally there are members only events).

My club (Terrace) is probably the most liberal on campus. There is no application to get in - for some clubs, you had to "bicker", which is basically like a job interview where the club decides whether you're socially apt enough and/or have the right connections. My club is "sign-in", which means everyone gets in, and if it overflows, there's a lottery to see who gets the spots. While there were rumors of club officers occasionally rigging the lottery, I generally thought this was a far less douchey system.

Terrace became known for excellent food and the corresponding motto, "food is love". They have a vegan and vegetarian option for every meal and it was all really damn good, plus I'm told the meat dishes were delicious too. I think the general philosophy was **** the bull**** from the other clubs, we come, we share the food, we share the love. It also features a ton of really good live music that I like (Everything from Elliot Smith back in the day to Girl Talk to the Wu Tang Clan). We, too, get plenty ****ed up, and plenty ****ed up often (we were on tap probably more than any other club) but it lacked a lot of the pretense that I'm not so into.

The president when I came in is actually a 2+2er, I forget his username though.

you must have deleted it per usual

What's about turtles?

Scallops are awesome.

Thoughts on sushi/sashimi?

How do you become fearless?

- what if everyone was fearless?

I am sorry that I bring it up and I don't mean to be not polite to merse since he is a great player, and maybe I should start another thread. Hope u guys don't mind. Anyway if u got the analysis right. Shouldn't u call if your pot odds>equity?

Turtles like food too!!!

Definitely a big fan, especially when it's really good. Never get it from the Poker Kitchen at the WSOP though.

Will get back to Wray's question, probably to give it an overly serious answer.

I didn't see this one yet, sorry if it's a repeat question, thread is starting to get too long to go back and look for it

What impact has coaching had on your game? What is your view on say a decent winning 50$/100$ reg coaching a lower stakes player. Is it a smart thing to do for the reg to improve his game? Does the student benefit or somehow get entrenched in his teacher's non optimal thought process? How much money do you think should be exchanged? I understand this is a very general question and depends a lot on the guy's skill level and teaching ability.

If I ever organise another coaching tree, would you consider being top coach? I'm still getting positive feedback about the networking it encouraged and some of the coach/student associations are still going strong.

How much Moolah ($$$$$) have you made from coaching vs Poker?

if you could change 7 things about your personality/looks/skills

what would it be and in what order?

There are rational fears, and there are irrational fears.

Almost always when people ask this type of question, they're talking about irrational fears. These are the situations where what seems like the more difficult path initially has the best expectation in the end. People know this, but they can't get themselves to get over the initial difficulty. They want to know how they can stop being afraid of the initial danger and do what's best for their lives. They can't ask out the girl, they can't jump into the lukewarm pool, they can't go skydiving, they can't dance at a party, they can't make the big bluff in the big situation in poker. Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for not doing these things, but sometimes there aren't.

Let's take your decision to move up from the $20s a while ago, where fear kept you down there way too long. This was a completely irrational fear - yes, there was a chance that you wouldn't make as much money (or lose) at the next level up, but any dispassionate, objective observer would certainly conclude that you had the best expectation from trusting the probabilities derived from your results and taking shots more quickly. In fact, I've calculated in the past that your fear has cost yourself over $100,000.

The brain has a very flawed perspective of risk. You risked six figures in potential earnings by gambling that there was a fairly high probability of lower expectation if you moved up. You were wrong. You lost $100,000 of potential earnings. That's the math. But the brain doesn't see it this way. The brain sees it as a neutral, even a positive. You keep winning money and improving your general financial situation. So to your brain, your situation continues to improve.

The problem comes from the brain far, far overvaluing having something for sure now, as compared against having something in the future some unknown (but reasonably estimable) percent of the time. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush only if your chances of getting two birds is pretty low. Otherwise I'll take all the ****ing birds I can get, thank you very much.

At every decision point in your life you have choices and one has better expectation than the others. When you pick wrong, your choice lost you that expectation. Your life just got worse from your bad decision. But most people will always see making the decision that keeps your life as "the same" as a neutral decision, rather than a positive or negative decision, as long as there is some risk involved from the other route.

It's best to see your current situation as an expectation line based on what you have and what you're poised to possibly get if you make good decisions, not just a line representing what you currently have.


So, back to the initial question. How do you become fearless? Well, if it's an irrational fear, realize why it's irrational and why not taking the more bold action is making your life worse. Try to realize that not taking a risk is also a risk, just like not calling off a shove 12bb deep with 22 because you want to "find a better spot" is a very risky fold. Start making small, measured, easier rebellions against your risk-averse nature. Note the results that your world didn't collapse.

Rational fears you shouldn't get over. They help you figure out what's best and should be accounted for accurately in good decision making.

I think coaching has lots of benefits to yourself. It definitely helped me understand the game a lot better. Even now, I'm still getting better because of it, without even playing. A student really wanted me to make an article about 10-15bb play from out of position, one of the most unknown aspects of endgame of poker. While writing it and running some numbers I actually learned a lot, like the fact that out of {K4o, Q8o, J5s, T9o, 76s}, Q8o is the worst hand to jam over a minraise against a particular example opponent 13bb deep, with K4o the best. The expectation from Q8o was much closer to that of 54o than K4o (which I didn't expect to be so strong, either). So of course I authoritatively wrote the article as if I knew that all along.

I honestly don't know. I made the mistake of taking a decent amount of FastTrack payments on FTP, even after Black Friday (mersenneary makes good decisions! Look at his good decision making processes! But seriously, 90%+ of payback, right?).

I make $175/video for the site.

That's not true, but maybe people will make more videos if they think they're getting offered more than me for it. More people should make videos. Sissy culture about not believing in coaching or talking about strategy publicly is getting more and more pronounced and it's a shame. It's not how you learned and if you had any self-respect for your game you'd be willing to talk about c-bet sizing because lol if someone's going to read your posts or watch your videos and then go crush you.

Kind of a ridiculously specific question (seven, really? what order, really?).

To pick some random small ones, I'd take a little more muscle, a little better ability to dance, some computer science skills to make my job easier, better short/medium putting skills in mini golf, an intuition/inclination towards cooking, a decreased need for so much sleep, and an increased ability to please six women at one time in a sevensome. I just felt inadequate trying to get it up for the fifth time onwards, you know?

Great post about fear!

Better post about sevensomes imo

Oh go on then as you asked so kindly Ill make you some . I could whip up a couple of good ones on O8 hu turbos. Cheap as chips.

Is it necessary to train B,C-game, or you just put poker down when feel tired or tilting. In short period it's better to play 3 hours per day your A-game, instead of 5-6 hours your random game, including tilt, tired attention ect.

I start to play in the morning, run well, than catch 3-4 badbeats, make some stupid mistakes. I Think to myself, - I'm tired, should stop playing.

Some fear involved?? or is it rational? Thanks.

im not mers, but it's obv, that is better to play 3 hours of A game, then 6hours with tilting and stuff...

What kind of advice would you give me:

Im seriously having major problems with giving ranges to people at my stakes (60 hypers )mostly. They do all kind of random things like: openjamming 53o, but than again playing kind of solid in other hands.

Really diffecult for me to do that, especially when I am playing more than 1 table. I don't think 1 tabling STs for a long period is smart to do so.

mersenneary I have seen in your vid from fast track program do calc. min/r calling 20bb deep table, then I insta buy that propokertool and start making some calc. but when I just check result with old clasic method manualy calc EV,
I get very different result, so can u please write me a formula how to get, that minr call A8s vs nit is 0.3bb EV+ 20bb deep
and then I use it for open jam 9bb deep 97o assume that oponent will call by nash and result come up it is EV-2bb witch is not when u do calc by yourself
so I am a bit confused with that propokertool

Post your manual calcs, hard to say what's wrong with them otherwise.

I think it's very important to learn how to work through tough patches in poker, especially when it's so standard as a couple games. Try to realize how much that's holding you back, not being able to continue well after just a few unlucky hands. It's a massive leak and should be treated as such, just like if you don't c-bet enough or get too crazy in trying to bluffcatch.

I always just think of a stat called spazzfactor, which is how much WTF stuff I've seen from a player. The openjam of 53 means you get to call a bit wider even if he's not doing it that often. Some people have no spazzfactor and you can often make huge folds against them and other adjustments.